Open letter to philosophers everywhere

To whom it may concern,
I have become increasingly frustrated with the way you write your articles, books and general ramblings. Either you don't know how to write sentences shorter than a page, spectacularly mis- and over-use commas (I thought I was bad before I started reading these texts) or (well, probably 'and'), my current frustration, you feel the need to use stupidly long words.

Do you realise that humiliating your reader into submission is not a good way to be convincing? The idea is you actually give a decent argument rather than just trying to sift out the people with enough sense to go, 'I'm not going to wade through this crap just to be left feeling wholly unsatisfied. There are enough people out there who can leave me feeling unsatisfied without wasting quite so much of my time.' Then, the only people who are left, will go 'oh yes, it was brilliant, quite brilliant indeed' because they don't want you to realise they don't know what most of the words meant.

When I've typed 'define: ...' into google more than 5 times while trying to read a philosophical article, I usually start to get a bit frustrated. It's all very well being elitist and aiming at a higher audience, but unfortunately some of us are forced (or at least optimistically expected) to read your bullshit. Philosophy is not (should not be?) about confusing and embarrassing people. It's about being convincing if you have something worthwhile to say. So from now on, if you're not going to let me understand what you're talking about, I'm going to assume you're attempting to hide a bad argument behind long words. Then I'll go back to reading books about Winnie the Pooh (the original text is a bit hardcore for me...).

Yours faithfully,
Me.

The chief enemy of creativity is good sense.

So I'm sitting here in my university room, surrounded by privilege and good fortune, but all I can feel is indignation about how unfair it is. I'm currently attempting to write an essay entitled 'is the making of art more or less free than the making of craft', but I can't help thinking that art is swiftly becoming one of our most restricted pursuits, and you'd better be a fucking good craftsman if you want to keep doing what you do.

I just read this blog, as linked by the lovely Katie, and it has made me furious. How can art or craft be free if the government is going to drain both of all their resources until they're dried up and ignored by everyone who is choosing not to look at them because they're afraid it will rinse out any money they have left in their pockets?

I'm a philosophy student, at a renowned university and I'm so grateful I made the decisions that I did which got me here. Like being born in 1992 rather than 1994. That was an awesome decision, but maybe I should give my parents credit for that one. But no matter how pleased I am that my tuition fees are in the humble £3000's rather than triple that, I'm still going to be here when funding for arts subjects are cut at university, when pointless subjects like philosophy get what they've had coming for all these years. Why should the government pay for me to write essays on the freedom of art? Where is the value in that?

Never mind that all of these people studied philosophy in some capacity at higher education. Including, I feel I ought to point out, a number of high profile politicians, including Nick Clegg who wrote a thesis on political philosophy and David Cameron who studied Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Oxford.

But you want to know something more ironic that I discovered on Clegg's wikipedia page? He was in the Cambridge student theatre, alongside Helena Bonham Carter.

How can this person make such extensive cuts to arts, all across the board? It's horrifying, and I'm afraid we will see a decline in the things which help to make our culture so rich, which it will take a long time to recover from. As a real fan of Propeller theatre company, and a friend of Katie, the idea of cuts to theatre, and all arts subjects, is awful. And my biggest fear is that it's not going to do the country any good, mindlessly forcing people into unemployment doesn't seem like an obvious solution to a recession as far as I'm concerned.

Fings wot I learned

You learn something new everyday. So here’s eight fascinating facts from my week.

1 My philosophy teacher actively encourages us to sell our notes to other students.

2 Ikea sell beds with no slats at the end. You know the kind where if you put your head in any crazy position like, whoa, on your pillow, your mattress will sink. Sending you head first into the wall.

3 My parents will get in and out of the car 5 times before deciding they’re ready to set off. Then they will realise they forgot something.

4 I blog about sex and buses too much. Next up: sexbuses – the latest in a range of mobile brothels. Kinky conductor sold separately.

5 I need help. Serious, sexbus related help.

6 My jaw and hips have impeccable comic timing – they click at the most inconvenient times. Particularly noticeable when leaping from my seat in shock to a chorus of 4 cracks.

7 English teachers use the most stupid acronyms. I mean, 'ER GRAMPA'? Just... what?

8 I have known Katie for over half my life. But less than half of hers. Figure that one out.

So, overall conclusion from my week? People are stupid. All of them. Myself included. 

World's Best Contraceptive

In philosophy today we were talking about how technology has developed in ways that to a large extent would probably have been beyond imagination centuries ago, so one day isn't it possible that we'll develop machines that answer philosophical questions? [this wasn't actually relevant to the lesson, but our discussions rarely are]
The example was a machine that could confirm the existence of God, which Lawrence called a Godometre.

This struck me as a hilarious invention, you can just imagine this box with a dial and speakers, which project a nasal, upper class woman's voice to forewarn you of God's presence. The good it would do for society would be incredible, in that it would be the worlds best contraceptive (trust me to make it sex-related):

-silence while boy and girl kiss-
Godometre: God's presence has been detected, God is currently in this room.
Boy: Shit, I'm off...
-leaves-

Not sure it would do much to stop Segun and Alex though. It was highly entertaining disturbing to watch them on the bus this afternoon: Segun in his faabulous tank top rapidly bouncing up and down on Alex's lap.
Oh dear God...

Anyway enough of my ramblings :)